Rainfall delay may force farmers to shift to short-cycle crops

Mumbai: The delay in rainfall is likely to impact crop-size and farmers may shift to short-cycle crops like cotton and castor seeds, a top agricultural commodities industry official said.

“The delay in monsoon has raised concern for several crops sown during the season. The sowing of crops like pulses, oilseeds and maize is already late by over 15 days,” the Solvent Extractors’ Association of India’s president, Ashok Sethia, said.

Most of the sowing in the country depends on the monsoon as over half of the cutivable land, due to lack of a proper irrigation system, is rain-fed.

Any further delay in rainfall is likely to impact the crop-size.

“Farmers may shift to short-cycle crops like cotton and castor seeds,” Sethia said.

Due to delay in arrival of monsoon, sowing of oilseeds of which the domestic production is on the decline, is also delayed. However, there has not been any major impact on the prices of vegetable oils as the country depends heavily on imports, Sethia said.

Oilseeds have a cycle of 105-120 days. If the monsoon departs as per its schedule by 15-30 September, the yields will be impacted.

For a good oilseed crop, rains should have been arrived by 25 June to central India and by 30 June to northern India, failing which the oilseeds crop may be lower than projected, he said.